Part 23 (2/2)
We never estimate the Uffizzi or the Louvre by the number of paintings they contain, yet we continue to grade modern libraries by the number of volumes groaning on dust-covered shelves. A library of five thousand well selected books may be of far more service than one of one hundred thousand composed largely of books outgrown and forgotten. Our public libraries must distinguish sharply between the library and the museum, to the advantage of both.
Secondly: Perspective. The library aims to show us facts in their large and permanent relations. There is no virtue in mere knowledge of facts (any more than in vast numbers of volumes). Most facts are not worth knowing, still less worth preserving. Doubtless the letter ”p” occurs a certain definite number of times in ”Idylls of the King,” and it may be that some deluded mortal in prison or asylum has ascertained that number; but we do not care to know that fact or have any one else know it. The exact number of grains in some ant-hill is doubtless discoverable, but only a lunatic would care for the discovery. Most facts in nature and in history are in our present stage of development without value. Only when these facts are collected, cla.s.sified, seen in relation, and translated into truth do they become of value to men.
For this reason the library must encourage, slow, patient, thoughtful reading. We have long been told that a taste for reading is worth ten thousand a year. Whether this is true or not depends altogether on what sort of reading is referred to. The habit of letting the mind lie pa.s.sive while some scribbler plays upon it is not worth ten thousand a year. The habit of letting the mind become a waste basket for sensation and scandal is not worth ten thousand a year. The habit of reading as a subst.i.tute for thinking is worth nothing, but is sheer damage to mental fibre. The university library is even more important than the university laboratory. In the laboratory we verify the theory which is far more likely to be discovered in the library. The new discovery is a new combination of old ideas, and such mental combination comes to us more easily when we are dealing with thoughts than with things.
Our students need to use books not only as tools, but as friends. In the old days, when the reading of college students was far more promiscuous than to-day, they were accustomed to regard books almost as personal acquaintances, and there was a genuine exchange of reaction of writer and reader. Such reading was indeed very desultory, but, as our professor of English literature is accustomed to say, ”it was immensely fattening.” Now, on the other hand, the college student goes to the library with a list of references, using many books, but becoming really acquainted with none. He opens one work at volume 2, page 193, another at volume 4, page 315, and, having extracted the precise bit of information he desires, has no further use for the author in question.
This modern method of reading is far more accurate and definite than the older method, and is obviously effective in securing results. But it must be supplemented by the ”browsing” of former days, by the large horizons which come from being set free in the companions.h.i.+p of great minds.
Thirdly: Ideals. Our libraries must not be only storehouses of knowledge, but reservoirs of power. The great books of all time give us contact with inspiring personalities, s.h.i.+ning examples, with the great leaders of men. The trophies of Themistocles will not suffer us to sleep. When such books come into many a shut-in life, to many a boyhood, cabined and confined, the limitations of the farm and factory are forgotten, the mind expands to a kins.h.i.+p with past and future, and the reader in some village library may become the prophet of the new century, and the leader of the modern world.
More than that: the literature of power creates the climate in which we live. It shapes our ideals of success, of power, of beauty, of goodness.
Fiction and poetry, if they thus create aspiration and give us standards, may be more useful than all encyclopedias or text-books, for they deal with the sources and the goal of all human action.
THE PROVISION OF BOOKS
The seven addresses or papers just preceding relate to the general services of the library to the community. The twelve that now follow a.n.a.lyze this into four types of special service, as already suggested--the provision of books, the collection of information, the control and guidance of reading and community-centre service. The next three papers treat of the provision of books.
THE LIBRARIAN AND HIS CONSt.i.tUENTS
That the choice of books is the most important of the librarian's duties and that ”his best effort” should be given to it, is the thought of an inst.i.tutional librarian, R.B. Poole of the New York Y.M.C.A. This view should interest those who think that administrative problems and socialization are elbowing the books into the background.
Reuben Brooks Poole was born in Rockport, Ma.s.s., in 1834, and graduated at Brown University in 1857. After serving as a teacher he became librarian of the Y.M.C.A. library in New York City, where he remained until his death on April 6, 1895. He was president of his state library a.s.sociation in 1894.
By const.i.tuents is not meant political const.i.tuents. It is unfortunate for any librarian when he holds his office in a public library as a political favor, and library appointments should be as far removed as possible from all party influences. A public library, like any other public property, is susceptible of being used as a tool, and may easily degenerate into a political job, unless specially protected by its charter. New York city has one such library. The library exists for the librarians; its const.i.tuents--not readers--are of the school of politics. The example, it is to be hoped, is a unique one in our country.
A brief retrospect of the libraries and librarians of the past may help us to more fully comprehend the situation of the librarian and his const.i.tuents of to-day.
The monk represented the librarian of the Middle Ages. He was not by profession a librarian, and yet the valuable service he rendered to literature ent.i.tles him to the name. He was at once chorister, master of ceremonies, transcriber, illuminator, and collector. Professedly the monk was a religious ascetic. He retired from the world to devote himself to religion, to a life of self-denial. His language was the Latin; the books or ma.n.u.scripts that surrounded him were works of the Fathers, books of devotion, service-books, and the cla.s.sics. These were just in keeping with his life and thoughts. A congenial occupation was thus opened to him. The hours of the cloister were made shorter as the monk duplicated and reduplicated some dainty missal, or some commentary of Augustine, or painted a miniature of the Virgin or of the apostles.
However much we may differ in opinion as to the service rendered to religion by the monasteries of the Middle Ages, as librarians we have a fellow-feeling with these toiling monks, and are grateful to them for the service they have rendered the libraries of to-day by their preservation of works that otherwise would have been destroyed. There is nothing in the book-making arts of to-day to compare with the artistic skill displayed in the illuminations and miniature-painting which enrich and beautify the ma.n.u.scripts of those times.
The monastic libraries were small, and the readers few. Books were loaned from monastery to monastery. They were distributed once a year, at the Lenten season. As each borrower returned his book he was catechised as to its contents, if the examination was satisfactory he was allowed another book for the coming year; if not, he must take his old book again.
One not a member of the order of St. Benedict, or an _attache_ of Cluny or Canterbury, could procure the coveted treasure, sometimes, by pledging to return with the ma.n.u.script borrowed a full transcription.
Library economy in these ages was very simple. Catalogues were little more than inventories, and no discordant notes were chanted, in duets or solos, over systems of cla.s.sification. The absolute or fixed system of shelving was in vogue, the books being held in their places by chains.
The survival of this feature exists in the attachments of the modern city directory.
But, not to linger longer in cloisters or abbeys, we come to the age of printing and to the foundation of the modern libraries of Europe; the treasures in the monastic libraries contributing to form their vast collections.
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